Case #1: Dear Esther – An Island and a Coin

[Godofhellfire]

This is the first contribution of a series on archaeological aspects in games and how an archaeological or historical perspective can help to understand what is going on. I have chosen Dear Esther, the critically acclaimed First Person Exploration game and “mother” of all Walking Simulators, because – besides of being impressed by the game itself – one can follow more than one approach (see below).

Background Information about Dear Esther

Launched 2008 as a Half Life 2-Modification in the context of a research project guided by Dan Pinchbeck, Dear Esther has generated serious discussions among developers being a real game or not – it was the first type of a game using the well-known First Person Shooter formula, but without enemies and interaction. 2012, an overhauled version of Dear Esther was released as a full game, beautifully modernized by Rob Briscoe using Valve’s Source engine. Finally, the game has been ported to the Unity engine and got a third life on Steam as Landmark Edition (2017).

In the game, you land on an inhospitable island and make your way through it until you reach the radio tower on its highest point. Accompanied by recited text passages, the player tries to understand what has happened, who he is, who the narrator is and so on. All these text snippets cause great confusion in the mind of the player, and this was the intention of the developers: There is no definite meaning, the interpretation of symbols is part of the game. Is this whole island even real?

A Real Island as a Model for a Symbolic one – Some Observations

On several locations on the presented island in the game, one can find an old Russian edition of a compendium of Maurice Maeterlinck’s works (1862-1949). This poet and essayist was a leading figure of the Symbolist movement (ancient mythical and biblical allegories with themes of dreams, phantasy, hallucinations, inexplicable things etc.), and his books often treat themes of death and the desperation people feel at the end of their lives. It seems, that this describes best, what Dear Esther is: Full of symbols and metaphors – but we will come back to Maeterlinck later. And everywhere on the island are symbols: Electronic circuits and chemical symbols on the walls, the golden ratio on the beach, biblical metaphors etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2095096308
Therefore, I was incredibly surprised to read, that the island Dear Esther is playing on, is a real one (Article[doi.org]). The model example for the game’s island is a 77 ha large island in the Outer Hebrides west of Scotland, belonging to the St. Kilda archipelago with its main isle Hirta: Boreray. Nowadays the island is famous for its specific sheep and nesting gannets, but for Dear Esther it was chosen because of its geography, vertical characteristics (cliffs) and human markers (huts). But neither sheep nor gannets are presented ingame (except two or three seagulls), even the two gigantic landmarks of Boreray, the sea stacks of Stac an Armin and Stac Lee, both around 200 m high, are missing. In fact, it could have been any island in a harsh, North-Atlantic environment. But there are some resources, to help to connect Boreray to the island of the game:

• The most apparent hint is hidden in the achievements of the game: If you “die from falling off a cliff once”, you earn the achievement “Stac an Armin”. This is the afore mentioned sea stack in the north of Boreray.
  
• Another resource is an officially commissioned map of the island of Dear Esther by Rosa Carbo-Mascarell (Homepage[rosacarbo.co.uk]). The map as a whole is not fully viewable on her site, but in Google’s image search you can get it. Compared with a proper map of Boreray (e.g. Canmore[canmore.org.uk]), it gets quickly apparent, that the model role of Boreray for the island in the game is noticeable, but not exceedingly precise: Even if nearly one third of the north part of Boreray is omitted in the game, the general layout of both is similar with the access to the plain, the course of the plain itself, the steep cliffs, the caves etc. Furthermore, some human-made structures can be found on Boreray but are common on the Hebridean island: Bothies or cleiteans (i.e. shelter buildings), peat stands, cultivations terraces and single standing cellular buildings. In fact, these mostly undatable structures are by far more numerous in reality than ingame.
  
• But the world builders of Dear Esther did not stop here: They included features of the main isle of the archipelago, Hirta, as well as features belonging to the Hebridean culture and tradition: The damaged trawler on the beach of Dear Esther finds his pendant in the longliner named Spinningdale that wrecked on the rocks of Hirta 2008 and was completely dismantled and removed in 2009, so that no traces are found nowadays onsite except on the internet. Obviously, the radar installation on top of the hill clearly resembles the one on Hirta erected during the Cold War. Lastly, the cave entrance in the game resembles several photos of caves on St. Kilda (Example[blog.geolsoc.org.uk]). And to conclude the examples we come back to the achievements: If you go out in the water and drown, you get the achievement “Seonaidh” which was a water spirit originating from the isle of Lewis and giving insight to local cults. On a special day, one inhabitant of the island was sent to the sea with a special gift for the spirit, praying for seaweed that was used for enriching the poor grounds of the isle (passed on us by Martin Martin, a Scottish writer of the early 18th century.

To conclude, the developers have chosen the specific island of Boreray in the Outer Hebrides to build on their narrative full of symbols and metaphors but provided it with features and structures known from the whole Hebridean culture area.

The Case of the Megalithic Stone Circle

One structure I want to focus on is the stone circle, one finds at the end of the plain in the game at the crossway of paths. It consists of a large monolith in the centre surrounded by eight smaller stones that form a rectangle, and again smaller stones that are irregularly spread around the circle. Is this circle a real structure on Boreray, of another isle on the Outer Hebrides or simply another imagination of the developers?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2095096154
Pre-history of the Northern Atlantic seaboard begins around 7000 BC with the first Mesolithic settlements; land use was intensified in the Neolithic period (4000-2500 BC) and we know of chambered tombs and some stone circles that date around 3000 BC – the stones of Callanish on Lewis being the most famous – , but on the St. Kilda archipelago there are no visible traces besides sherds, flint and stone tools. Several archaeological surveys on the small isle have been unsuccessful locating a possible stone circle on Boreray that is, however, attested in another historical account: In 1764, Reverend Kenneth Macaulay wrote in his History of St. Kilda (Google-Books[books.google.ch]) of a druidical place of worship, a large circle of huge stones fixed perpendicularly in the ground, at equal distances from one another, with one more remarkably in the centre, which is flat on the top…(p. 58). This report was confirmed by others claiming the structure as a “temple”, but mentioning, that stones have been reused for other buildings (Read page 176 for the complete story[archaeol.wwwnlls6.a2hosted.com]). Other boulders in a circular form on Hirta have been recently interpreted as an enclosure.

To sum up, the stone circle in Dear Esther represents possibly the attempt of the developers to ascribe a history to the isle ranging back from the Neolithic. The form of the circle resembles the description of Macaulay but could also be a smaller version of known stone circles in the Hebrides.

Maeterlinck, Donnelly and Alexander the Great – Symbols of the Past

As promised, we come back to Maurice Maeterlinck. But apart from his symbolism, it is interesting to note that Maeterlinck suffered from Neurasthenia, a mechanical weakness of the nerves; the typical symptoms of this diagnosis are exhaustion and fatigue. Sounds familiar? The narrator of Dear Esther speaks on several occasions of his intensified fatigue until the end of the game.
But he is not the only historical person involved: One main protagonist in the narration is the cartographer and writer Donnelly, who once came to the island of Dear Esther in order to find a famous hermit. Not able to track him, Donnelly began to study the people (especially a herder named Jacobson) and wrote a book called “A Hebridean History”, while getting addicted to laudanum/opium and ending with a serious syphilis. Searching for historical models, one stumbles upon a Scottish writer and lawyer called James Boswell who composed “The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson” (Read here[www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk]) in 1785. Although he has never visited the St. Kilda archipelago, it seems striking regarding the fact, that James Boswell died from a combination of syphilis and alcoholism. Again, a hint to the fate of the narrator in Dear Esther.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2095096343
Lastly, a forum post hinted me to another historical figure: Alexander the Great. In the caves there is a pool designed as a wishing well; even if the pool is surrounded by coins, only four coin images have been used, among them a silver coin showing the head of Alexander the Great, the famous Macedonian king, who enlarged the Greek Empire at the beginning of the 3rd century BC.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2095096430
Looking closely over the coin, one can observe, that Alexander is shown with horns curling around his ears. These are the horns of Ammon, the Egyptian deity, and Alexander used his portrait on the coins to claim his ancestry directly from this Egyptian god (compare coin in the British museum[www.britishmuseum.org]). By the way, Alexander died from alcoholism or maybe a poisoning with white verartrum, a plant causing i.a. hallucinations. But let us get back to Ammon’s horns: In Medieval times and much more in the 19th century, these horns were connected to – hence the name – fossil shells or ammonites. So, it fits very well its location in the caves; but the story goes on. A part of the human brain and especially a part of the hippocampus is called cornu ammonis, which means the horns of Ammon (obviously because of its form). The neural cell loss in this part of the hippocampus is called mesial temporal sclerosis or in German “Ammonshornsklerose”. The cells of the cornu ammonis are easily affected by alcoholism and can lead to the so-called Korsakow syndrome, a form of amnesia, which let the patient to be confused about the when and where. Fits the plot of Dear Esther very well, doesn’t it? And guess, how another mod of the developer Thechineseroom is called Korsakovia).

Thus, all three mentioned figures represented through objects are linked to the environment of the game (wishing well, geographic book, old book) reasonably, but hint in a second sense to alcoholism or the medical damages caused by it or other diseases. Sometimes the way to understand these symbols is difficult; at least as far as I know no one has found out ever about the coin of Alexander the Great and its meaning.

Dear Esther has a fascinating story and environment. Even more fascinating is, how the developers have chosen a real island, Boreray, and tried to populate it with features and structures ranging from Neolithic times to the present, including genuine markers of Boreray, authentic markers of Hirta, the neighboring isle, and common traditions of the Outer Hebrides. This pretended historical accuracy also applies to the small objects in the game: The books and coins establish a reasonable environment, but they hold a deeper meaning for the game connecting real-life characters and their (mostly) negative fate with the virtual narrative – spanning from antiquity to modern times, too.

Addendum: Approaches and Literature

This short paragraph shall aim at giving insight at my sources and approaches to Dear Esther. The first step was, of course, playing Dear Esther Landmark Edition. After some internet research I found out of Boreray, generating my interest in the St. Kilda archipelago; subsequently, I ordered the fascinating book “St. Kilda. The Last and Outmost Isle” from 2016, in which the authors Gannon and Geddes present the results of recent archaeological fieldwork, thus being my main source for historical and archaeological accuracy. For information on the stone circle I searched on the archived blog of Dan Pinchbeck, the creator, using web.archive, but was unsuccessful. To take some of the uploaded photos, I used the Source Version of Dear Esther with the console command noclip to get better angles and a bird perspective, but also to search for hidden hints. Besides all the ghosts and one locked-in dedication, I found a single standing ruin on the flank of the hill in the last level – why it is here (it’s out of reach in the game), I don’t know; if it’s in the Unity version, I have yet to proof. For me research on the coin of Alexander I used coinarchives.com to identify the type and then made use of Wikipedia to find out of the hippocampal connection.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2095096501

[SABE]

This was a really interesting read! It's fascinating to see that the devs included so many historical references with actual meaning, although I didn't realize these connected to the narrative of the game in this way. I played this game back when it was released, so I don't recall the plot points that well.

[Keks]

As I heard this game might be rather dull, your essay proof, that there might me more in it, that ist seems. I'm looking forward for it to play and see it on my own. Thank you so far.

[Godofhellfire]

In terms of gameplay and interaction you might find it dull ...